A month after popular vote loser Donald Trump’s election, some 450 houses of worship nationwide pledged to become sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants, with one church in the Los Angeles area calling for “holy resistance” to his mass deportation force. And houses of worship have heeded the call, with the number of congregations vowing to protect immigrants from ICE doubling to 800, according to a new report from 60 Minutes. Undocumented parents like Jeanette Vizguerra—recently named one of Time’s 100 most influential people—have fled to churches for safety and as a last recourse. 60 Minutes talked to another immigrant who has gone into sanctuary, transcribed below:
Sixto Paz: This is my country. I'm working hard.
Sixto Paz would have been deported 10 months ago if he hadn't confined himself to Shadow Rock United Church of Christ in Phoenix. Ismael Delgado moved in four months ago.
Ismael Delgado: We came to work.
Paz crossed illegally in 1985. Under the policy of President Reagan he was granted a work permit, which was revoked under the policies of George W. Bush. His four children are citizens by birth. His youngest is five.
Sixto Paz: I spent 32 years over here, and I don't wanna leave him alone. And I paid my taxes for 28 years.
[60 Minutes’] Scott Pelley: Paid your taxes 28 years?
Sixto Paz: Yes, yes.
Scott Pelley: There are people watching the interview who are saying, you shouldn't have come here.
Sixto Paz: When someone, you're hungry, you not have a job, you not have money. What are you gonna do? I not come to United States to take vacation, man. I'm here because I had to. I'm come over here, and I respect all the law, I respect the people, I'm working hard to do the best. I've got a clean record. And I learned a lot over here, I learned a language. It's not, I don't speak very well, but I'm working on that. And my son, my daughters, they're professionals.
Scott Pelley: You have two older daughters who are medical assistants?
Sixto Paz: Yes.
Scott Pelley: They both graduated from college here in the United States?
Sixto Paz: Yes, yes, sir.
Scott Pelley: Sounds like the American Dream.
Sixto Paz: Yes.
Per ICE policies, federal immigration agents avoid “sensitive locations” like churches, but since Trump’s inauguration, they have come dangerously close to testing the line. Just weeks after the popular vote loser placed his hand on a Bible to be sworn in, his deportation force stalked a church-run hypothermia shelter in Virginia, arresting six immigrants. In the time since then, however, immigrants in sanctuary have remained safe, thanks to a combination of media exposure and support from pro-immigrant Americans. ICE expressed their clear displeasure to 60 Minutes:
Daniel Ragsdale is deputy director of ICE. He runs the daily operations and oversees 13,000 officers.
Daniel Ragsdale: So if they are to check in with ICE, they should come and check in with ICE.
Scott Pelley: Checking in with ICE is gonna get them deported.
Daniel Ragsdale: Checking in with ICE will follow the law. And in cases where there's a removal order, of course we would execute it.
Pelley is right. As immigrant rights group America’s Voice noted just earlier today, undocumented immigrants who have been following the rules by regularly checking in with ICE have been targeted for arrest as the easiest immigrants to apprehend and to pad up deportation numbers, since thousands of the immigrants detained by ICE actually have no criminal record despite Trump’s claim he would target only “bad hombres” for removal. Jeanette herself chose to go into sanctuary the night before her first scheduled check-in under the Trump regime:
These “silent raids” target individuals on a one-by-one basis. Immigrants walk into ICE offices, and instead of being checked in and sent back out to live their lives as has happened for years, they are being detained and deported. Ironically, this strategy punishes people who are trying to do what the government has asked of them. Typically, they have been living in the country for a decade or more, have U.S. citizen children, and have nothing on their record that suggests they are dangerous. They are just regular immigrants who a previous administration thought should be put at the bottom of the deportation list, as long as they continued to check-in as required.
High profile cases, such as those of Guadalupe García de Rayos in Arizona and Roberto Beristain in Indiana, and additional examples from Arizona, California, Connecticut,Florida, Georgia, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina fit into the same pattern: formerly routine appointments at ICE offices are becoming the first step towards expulsion from the United States. Other examples, such as the tragic story of Ohio mother Maribel Trujillo-Diaz, show that detainment and eventual deportation for others have come shortly after an annual ICE check-in.
“We're taking a leap of faith, right, in many respects, because we don't know what's going to happen,” said Rev. Robin Hynicka of Philadelphia's Arch Street Methodist Church. The church was built by Abraham Lincoln’s favorite minister and has pledged to become a place of sanctuary for undocumented immigrants.
”My baptismal covenant,” she said, “there's a vow that's taken either on my behalf when I was baptized as a child or as an adult, that I would take the power and the freedom that God gives me to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they show themselves.”